An Indonesian Court on Monday ordered police to free notorious Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres -- whose capture had been urged by angry foreign governments -- after it ruled his arrest was unlawful. Guterres was arrested over the violence that led to the slaughter of three United Nations refugee workers in west Timor last month. Foreign donors had warned Jakarta that vital aid would be at risk if it failed to punish those responsible. ''The court hereby declares the arrest and detention of Eurico Guterres unlawful and orders the release of him from police detention,'' presiding Judge Putra Jatnya told the south Jakarta Court on Monday. Guterres' lawyers had argued in court that police did not have a valid warrant when they arrested him in Jakarta. The United Nations administration ruling Guterres' homeland of East Timor also wants him handed over for questioning over two massacres in which scores of civilians were butchered before last year's independence vote. But Jakarta has so far refused.
Pro-Jakarta militias, backed by the Indonesian military and police, waged a campaign of terror in the lead up to the independence vote and then laid waste to the territory after it voted to end Indonesian rule, driving 300,000 people into Indonesian West Timor.
Bureau Report